Are you paying the minimum payments on your credit card bills only to find your principle balance is not going down? Is the total balance on all of your credit cards choking your checkbook every month?
There are simple steps to ease the pain.
Make a list of all your credit cards including the balances and interest rates.
Next call each and every one of the credit card companies and see if they can lower your interest rates. Sometimes they will have special promotional offers that will drastically reduce the rates if your account is in good standing.
Once in a while some credit card companies will offer 0% interest rates on balance transfers. Beware, the transfer fees can be very high and sometimes have no limits. But if you get an offer to transfer your balances at 0% interest with only a small one time fee, this may be very helpful.
But lets assume you have spoken to your creditors and lowered the rates where possible. Now it's time for the math. Figure out exactly how much money you have each month in your budget available to pay your credit card debt. Then deduct the minimum monthly payments due on each. What is left from your initial credit card budget, you are going to add to the minimum payment of the credit card with the highest interest rate. This will reduce your principle balance due on the highest interest rate credit card. You do this every month faithfully.
When that card is paid in full, you will take the money you were sending to the high interest credit card and add that to the credit card next in line. As you go down the line, you will be eliminating balances on high interest rate cards, reducing your debt and saving money.
Lastly, the best advice I can give. Remember how you got yourself into so much debt in the first place. Make a conscious effort not to spend more on your charge cards in a month than you can pay back when the bill comes in. You have first-hand knowledge of how quickly it can get out of hand.
This is the first in a series of financial consumer tips that will be written by Michelle Moglia of http://www.Progressive-Debt-Consolidation.com
